


Paradise Lost

by ivanolix



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Time Travel, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-20
Updated: 2011-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Richard and Cara had been sent to the past instead of the future in the episode Reckoning?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradise Lost

The more he squirmed, the more the chains rubbed him raw. Mistress Cara had been thorough, and there was no way to get loose from this tree she'd bound him too. Richard hissed through his clenched teeth, but it was more a sigh.

He wasn't sure he wanted to know where she had secreted a collar _and_ a chain as they escaped the People's Palace. It wasn't politic to cast a close glance at how snugly her leather fit.

Before she bound him, he'd felt sympathy for her. To say she hadn't met with a welcome was an understatement, given the marks Panis Rahl had left behind her ear while trying to force the leather off her, paying no heed to the news she'd brought. Given the look in the Mord'Sith's eyes as she'd cursed the presiding Lord Rahl as a pale shadow of his son before knocking him to the floor with her agiel. At that moment, he'd felt for Mistress Cara.

After a hasty battle, however, that they'd only won because of the drunkenness of Panis' closest guards, she'd snapped the collar around Richard's neck and chained him in the forest. A bastard in all but birth Panis Rahl might be, but imprisonment made Richard feel only seething frustration for Cara.

No less because a remembrance now returned to him of what this woman stood for and who she'd called a sister.

Cara was more blunt than Denna. No games to tease him with, no ambiguity. And since they were indeed cast back to a past where capturing the Seeker alive brought her no reward, she might just be leaving him to starve.

His hourglass of energy drained faster the longer the chains bit at his flesh relentlessly. It was hopeless. If he was lucky, a wild animal would get to him before thirst did. If he was very lucky.

A weeping child woke him a couple hours later, and it was only then that he realized he'd fallen asleep. Richard jerked himself alert and blinked several times, but the grey-green shadows didn't disappear. It was chill, and the sun hadn't risen above the canopy of the forest.

The crying continued. Richard's first thought was protective—the second, pragmatic. He could hardly comfort distress unless he was first rescued.

But a woman's sharp tones made him forget that train of thought. "Do you want to wake every robber from here to the Midlands?"

The child continued sobbing.

Both were coming towards him, and before he saw them Richard recognized the voice. Mistress Cara. What in the name of all good spirits was she doing with a child?

The blonde Mord'Sith marched out of the trees towards Richard, hips swaying slightly less now that a dark-haired toddler was perched on one, clutching the buckles on her leather. At least it wasn't the side she strapped her agiel to.

"Alive still," Cara intoned. She turned her course straight towards him. "Then the one good thing to come from this disaster is that I can give you the death you deserve for it."

"No!" the child wailed, suddenly coherent. "No kill."

Cara looked at the babe in her arms, for one moment looking like it was a bug she would be better off squashing.

Richard couldn't comprehend why the look changed to one of resentful acceptance a few seconds later. Then again, he couldn't comprehend why the Mord'Sith would have a child, much less carry it around.

She stared at the toddler for a few more moments, then set him down on the forest floor. "Let us hope he has _some_ use alive," Cara amended while glaring at Richard.

Confusion was successfully seducing Richard into its foggy clutches.

Cara roughly unclasped Richard's restraints, and before he could catch his bearings she spun him around and thrust him against the tree. The uneven bark raked at his face and made him hiss in a breath. Cara had his hands swiftly bound, and with the collar still around his neck Richard knew it was useless to resist.

"I don't think Lord Rahl would approve if I used my agiel on you," Cara whispered coldly in his ear. "But don't think that's the only way I can punish you. I only have to keep you alive, for his sake."

"Who?" Richard gulped out.

Cara forced him around. "The only Lord Rahl worth serving," the Mord'Sith said, as if to herself.

"Rahl," the small boy said gravely in cautious acknowledgment of their stares. He sniffled back tears. "Me. Darken Rahl."

Richard stared at his prophesied nemesis, and saw blue eyes glisten with childlike tears.

Cara dragged Richard behind her down the path, keeping a tight grip on the chain attached to his collar. "Come boy, I'll carry you again," she said with gruff respect to Darken.

Darken Rahl, the child barely old enough to walk.

This shouldn't be.

*

"Mord'Sith serve the House of Rahl, not any one leader, isn't that right?" Yank! Richard stumbled forward and choked at the pressure on his windpipe.

Darken Rahl peeped over Cara's shoulder at him and frowned a little. That frown was a little too familiar, and yet...

Richard couldn't keep his mouth shut. Zedd would have had a familiar scold ready for him, if he hadn't lived in a far-distant future. And really, Richard was abandoned in the past, it wasn't like there was any way to throw his life further off-course. So he didn't bother holding his tongue. "Denna told me that, I'm not just guessing. Mord'Sith serve the House of Rahl, whoever presides over D'Hara at any particular time."

Yank!

"Choking me won't make me stop," Richard said with half a growl.

Cara turned, fingering her agiel in a too-intimate way that made her eyes look like green fire. "Lord Rahl doesn't wish me to kill you, but ripping out your tongue is not nearly so shocking a sight..."

He bit his tongue and fumed. A day and a half since Cara had taken them from the People's Palace—this former People's Palace where Panis Rahl orgied and schemed and had no idea the chaos about to envelop the world—and she hadn't explained a single action. He was still the Seeker of Truth and the lack of that quality was driving him mad.

Darken Rahl, of all people, spared Richard yet again from Cara's Mord'Sith ways. "No tongues."

She ground her teeth together.

"No tongues?" Darken asked, looking up at the blonde woman as if he was worried she still intended to hurt Richard. Obviously he was a quick character study.

The Mord'Sith grunted and nodded, grudgingly.

"Thank you mama," the babe murmured and rested his cheek against her chest comfortably.

"I'm not your mother!" Cara snapped, more in shock than anger.

Richard could have laughed if not so frustrated. Of all the situations to be in...

Darken Rahl didn't protest, just curled in on himself and hid his face. Like a dog who'd been kicked to the corner, a dog who'd spent too many nights in the corner, and who expected to return there even after venturing hopefully forth. Suddenly Richard's heart ached for a child that could find rejection so routine, and defensiveness spurred him to speech again. "If he's not your pet or your child, then what is he?"

Cara glared sharply at him. "The only Lord Rahl I will ever serve. The only Rahl who deserves service."

Richard didn't feel like he understood it any better now than when she first said it.

In a move that seemed forged of pure discomfort, the Mord'Sith shifted her weight and gingerly touched the head of the child still balled up in her arms. "I will not hurt you, Lord Rahl." The softness in her voice surprised both males.

Surprise. How he was starting to find the word tiresome. Once Richard had been the Seeker of Truth. Sword at his back, Kahlan and Zedd at either side, and Darken Rahl straight ahead. Life had been clear-cut, if difficult.

Now he was the prisoner of a Mord'Sith who couldn't kill his "useless" self because a two-year-old child had forbad it. The two-year-old self of a man who'd put a bounty on Richard's head. And the Mord'Sith, without telling either of them her purposes, was marching them both further and further into the wilderness.

None of the pieces fit together in Richard's head. Judging from Darken's expression, none fit for him either.

It was strange how the least confusing thing in this situation was that a child clung to a Mord'Sith for safety.

*

Darken Rahl feasted on the berries that Cara had plucked for him, knees drawn to his chest and bowl resting on top of them.

They'd been wandering through the D'Haran wilderness for three days. Richard had forgotten that he probably should escape.

"This wasn't the plan, was it," Richard said, poking at the low fire. Cara had finally started binding his hands in front of him instead of behind. With no explanation for the change—but he was learning to bite his tongue on less important matters.

The Mord'Sith, her braid seeming dull after a long day of damp forest travel, eyed him guardedly and said nothing.

"It's not like anyone can hear you if you admit it," Richard dared, with a slight shrug as he met her eyes. "Not anyone who should matter to you. We're out of time, you don't need to keep up the mask."

"Did Denna tell you that, that it's just a mask?" Cara laughed dryly. "And you believed it? I'm surprised you didn't break sooner."

Richard's right hand balled into a fist, and he wished for the thousandth time that he still had the Sword of Truth.

"But," the Mord'Sith added after a few moments of silence, "it hardly takes ingenuity to realize that this wasn't the plan."

He made an incoherent noise.

The fire flickered, and Cara gazed into its depths. As always, her face twisted in sharp discomfort, and she didn't speak.

Maybe, if she hadn't been Mord'Sith, he could have felt for her. But she was. And the more she kept trying to _hide_ the parts that weren't, the more annoyed Richard became.

Every time he thought it couldn't get worse, it did.

Darken Rahl, eyes half-hooded with sleepiness after he finished his meal, crawled over and climbed on Cara's lap. He patted her leather-covered belly with one hand, snuggled into a little ball and mumbled, "Night, mama."

Both Seeker and Mord'Sith had the same reaction to that.

Somehow, though, it was Cara who relaxed her jaw first. "Sleep well, Lord Rahl," she murmured.

Maybe it wasn't getting worse, Richard corrected, but it was getting more uncomfortable.

*

He woke one morning to find Darken sitting cross-legged by him. The boy was chewing his lip, watching him with intense eyes.

Richard didn't like being looked at like that. Not by Darken. "What is it?" he asked groggily.

"You want to kill me?" the boy asked.

Richard blinked. If he hadn't felt so cold and damp, he would have suspected a dream. "What?"

"She said you'd kill me, if I untied you." Darken chewed his lower lip, and it quivered a little but he didn't look afraid.

Richard shifted awkwardly up to a seated position. "I don't want to kill _you_ ," he admitted reluctantly.

Darken frowned.

"I know, it's insane." Richard rubbed at his brow. "I don't have to kill you now. You're a child."

"Mama says she'll help me be a better Lord Rahl."

He jerked his head up suddenly. "Cara told you that? What else did she say?"

Darken Rahl eyed him. On the grown man, such looks had filled Richard with suspicion—on the child, it just made him pity the boy who couldn't trust his world. Darken gnawed at his thumb a little before answering, "She said Papa couldn't take care of me. He wasn't a good man."

Nodding slowly, Richard pondered the words. He frowned. It was a strange motive for Cara to admit to, whether it was true or not. "So she stole you away from your family?"

The little boy nodded slowly, and then twisted his mouth. "But..." He looked down at his feet and didn't answer.

Richard suddenly remembered Panis Rahl's behavior. And the fact that Darken called Cara mama, because perhaps she was the only woman who'd ever filled that protective role. He swallowed. "You didn't have much of a family at all."

Darken went back to chewing on his thumb, just shaking his head.

He didn't know if this was Cara's plan—he doubted it, despite the Mord'Sith's lack of ruthlessness when it came to the boy—but Richard decided to adopt it as his. Change the course of history for the better. Without the boxes of Orden, all Richard's hopes and dreams for his own time...for Kahlan...were hopeless. It made him feel sick, but he'd suppress that. He would never tell this boy that he'd wanted to kill him a few days ago. There was more than one way to fulfill the prophecy.

Richard _would_ kill Darken, but only the Darken that he remembered. As long as Cara kept him alive, Richard could change this boy's life.

Maybe this blue-eyed child had a heart that was still innocent. Richard believed in redemption. He had to believe in this too.

"She was lying, I don't want to kill you," he told the boy with a soft smile. "My name's Richard."


End file.
